Pain can have a variety of causes including, for example, resulting from surgical intervention. Patients undergoing surgery often suffer significantly from post-operative pain and have a high likelihood of developing chronic dysaesthesia, causing impairment and sensitivity to touch. Pre-emptive analgesia helps decrease post-operative discomfort by blocking autonomic and somatic reflex responses. Successful management of pain may allow for improved post-operative function, greater patient satisfaction, quicker rehabilitation, and decreased hospitalization. Pre-emptive analgesia may also decrease the likelihood of developing chronic dysaesthesias.
Analgesics may be delivered orally, nasally, intravenously, intramuscularly, and transdermally. Self-administration of intra-venous and intramuscular injections is difficult for patients and the likelihood of compliance is low. Infusion pumps have been used to administer medications; however, complications including infections have been described. Additionally, these devices deliver an unconstrained amount of medication that may be associated with complications as a result of the medication having undesired interactions with local structures, for example, spinal nerves or vital organs.
Other concepts relating to the controlled release of fluids in the body are disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,119,062 to Alvis for Methods and Compositions for Improved Articular Surgery Using Collagen; U.S. Pat. No. 6,921,541 to Chasin for Formulations and Methods for Providing Prolonged Local Anesthesia; U.S. Pat. No. 7,282,214 to Willcox for Biomedical Devices with Antimicrobial Coatings; U.S. Pat. No. 6,558,686 to Raad for Antimicrobial Coated Medical Implants; U.S. Pat. No. 7,201,745 to DiMatteo for Anti-Infective Central Venous Catheter with Diffusion Barrier Layer; U.S. Pat. No. 6,534,559 to Vanderlaan for Biomedical Devices with Hydrophilic Coatings; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,514,517 to Jamiolkowski for Antimicrobial Coatings fro Medical Devices.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide methods and apparatuses for delivering medicament in a localized manner to a bodily area.